87,000 Hours (Doesn't Change a Damn Thing)
by SparksOfWhiteLight
Summary: A decade after graduation, Stiles has grown into a somewhat-respectable Officer Stilinski and Lydia - who fled Beacon Hills the instant she had her diploma in hand - has become an A-list actress. But when someone tries to kill her at an awards show and she has to go into hiding, she realizes Stiles is still one of the only people she trusts with her life... and, maybe, her heart.
1. Chapter 1

Lydia shifts in the plush velvet seat, fiddling with her fifteen-carat emerald bracelet and crossing and uncrossing her ankles. She knows she shouldn't; all the fidgeting will wrinkle her dress and she has already snagged the hem on the heel of one of her vintage stilettos. Her stylist is probably watching the live telecast and making some gruesomely twisted approximation of a pout (the best the over-application of Botox will allow) and she imagines Christian Dior himself is spinning in his grave over someone as twitchy as Lydia wearing his gorgeous haute couture, even if she is nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress tonight.

But right now Lydia doesn't care about any of that. She's hungry and tired, cranky from the hours she had to spend on the red carpet answering the same half-dozen insipid questions over and over, and now she's stuck sitting next to some random seat-filler who has spent the last five minutes staring at her tits because Jackson canceled on her at the last minute.

Even twelve years after they'd broken up, he was finding new and creative ways of disappointing her.

And the ceremony is __boring___. _It's been underway for 92 minutes but Lydia's certain it's somewhere much closer to the 17 hour mark. She sighs and pokes at the artfully plated meal before her without taking a bite - she doesn't want spinach stuck in her teeth if she has to give an acceptance speech - as Angelina Jolie's skeletal frame steps up to the microphone at center stage.

"This past year has brought us great highs and terrible lows, laughter and tears, new friends and heartbreaking farewells-"

__And this trite, platitudinous little speech,__Lydia thinks as she rolls her eyes, putting down her fork and reaching for another glass of champagne instead.

There's a dramatic pause as the orchestra begins playing something morose, signaling the start of Lydia's least-favorite portion of an already insufferable ceremony - the interminably long __in memoriam __montage.

Angelina continues, solemnly, "Please join me in saying goodbye to those who were lost, and honoring their contributions to world of film." She steps back and clasps her hands in front of her as the stage darkens and the large screen fills with old film footage, superimposed with familiar names and faces, with nothing to link them except two simple facts - they were entertainers of some sort, and they recently stopped breathing.

Lydia drains her glass, the fizz still burning at the back of her throat as she reaches to refill it. She hates these montages, hates them more than the endless red carpet or the camera that they'll shove in her face when they read the nominees for her category. She knows they most likely won't call her name as the winner; all the so-called Hollywood experts are calling her a "dark horse" and she has made her peace with it.

But this, the roster of recently-deceased entertainers? This is a list that she is all too aware she will someday be on. They'll put her name up there, probably with the famous climactic scene from __Formative Years___, _the film she's nominated for tonight. There will be a polite smattering of applause, maybe a few half-hearted murmurs of "she'll be so missed," and that will be it.

She can see it all so clearly. After all, Lydia is from Beacon Hills; at only 28 she's already far more familiar with the rituals of death than any of the glittering stars surrounding her.

She's got the half-empty bottle of Moët in one hand and is pouring carefully, trying to hold her champagne flute at the exact right angle to keep it from foaming too much, so when the entire ballroom gasps - suddenly, collectively - she has no idea why. Time seems to thicken and slow; Lydia has one long, blissful second where the whole world shrinks down to the golden bubbles in her glass and the shining red lacquer of her fingernails.

And then the mouth-breathing seat-filler puts his hand on her knee and jerks his chin toward the stage.

Lydia flicks her eyes up, a furrow creasing between her brows, a frown beginning to tug at the corners of her flawlessly-lipsticked mouth.

It takes too long to process what she sees - she wonders, wildly, how many extra milliseconds she would have remained clueless if she didn't have such an ungodly high IQ - and then the synapses between her eyes and her brain begin to sort out the difference between her nightmares and the reality confronting her.

Because there she is on the screen, in the pivotal scene from __Formative Years__: striding out of a burning building with her arms around her costar, her red hair artfully mussed and soot streaked across her face in a way that highlights the caramel colors in her eyes. And then there's her name, in a serious black font - and even in her growing shock she thinks she can identify it as Palatino - stamped across the bottom of the footage with two very familiar dates.

Her birthday...and today.

Someone has added her to the __in memoriam __montage, and they've chosen this as the day she'll die.

The murmurs have grown to a louder chatter; dozens of people have pulled out their phones, the cameras aimed at Lydia's face to record her reaction.

She'd call them vultures if she could find her voice; she'd carefully arrange her face into a neutral mask but that, too, seems out of reach. Her head is filled with static and it's so hard, impossible, really, to calculate what she should do - what she __can __do - but the room is suddenly so small and she wants __out__.

She's still holding the champagne flute (now so tightly that her knuckles have bleached as white as her suddenly bloodless face) and pushes her free hand flat against the tabletop to help herself stand.

A spotlight sweeps the crowd before stopping on her; for one long moment she's just illuminated there, pale, waxy, and still, like a Madame Tussaud's statue of Marilyn Monroe or Mae West - one of those other beautiful, __dead __actresses. And then the digital version of herself on the screen changes, morphing into the maniacal laughter scene from one of her earlier roles, __Banshees___, _and it all becomes even more surreal and terrifying.

Lydia is frozen, barely even breathing - her mouth a perfect, silent "o" as she stares at her own frightening, deranged visage onscreen - and then the world explodes.

There's the sharp, deafening crack of a shot and the seemingly simultaneous - and inconceivably small - tinkle of shattering glass when the flute in her hand bursts into a hundred thousand slivers. And then there's a hole in the otherwise pristine tablecloth and a cascade of champagne that soaks her hand and pools on the table beneath her.

She can't hear anything but the ringing in her ears but she can see everyone's horrified faces, imagine the screams pouring out of their throats as they run, tripping over chairs and one another, pulling and pushing and clawing their way toward the exits in a singularly surging mass. The aisles are littered with dozens of discarded Louboutin heels, allowing their owners to run freely and the upturned red soles leaving the carpets looking like they're hemorrhaging.

The only stationary object through all of it is Lydia herself, her hand sliced open by the shards of glass and dripping blood into the champagne spilled on the table, swirling and merging until it turns a shade of pink startlingly similar to Lydia's lipstick.

She doesn't see it. Her eyes are locked on the now-frozen image of herself on the giant screen and that death date - so formal, so imperious, so permanently etched into her brain that she's certain she will see it every time she closes her eyes, like the ghost image that appears after staring too long at the sun.

And then there's another crack, accompanied by the sharp sting of a pinch or a bee at her bare shoulder, and it brings the world rushing back into her frozen senses at top speed: Men in suits and earpieces swarming her now-empty table and shouting over the ringing in her ears for her to get down. A hand shoving at her shoulder, more pushing at her back. She scans the room, frantic now, and sees the glowing exit sign at what seems like an insurmountable distance.

She clambers over an overturned chair, rucking her long skirt up into her hands to give her room to run, but another crack splits the air - and suddenly one of the supportive hands at her back falls away. She tries to turn back but the other security guards won't allow it, and her recorded laughter still loops on top volume through the speakers and they're running, half-tripping and surging, and then the side door finally bangs open before them-

-it's dark and cool, the early January California air suddenly surrounding her while the building muffles the madness raging inside.

Lydia feels like she can almost breathe again, like none of it really happened.

For a second, anyway. Then the security guards hustle her into a waiting SUV, the door slammed shut before she can even pull her entire skirt inside, and speed off into the quiet black night.

* * *

Stiles sits sprawled in his cruiser on the far edge of town, theoretically monitoring motorist highway speed.

In reality, he's watching Lydia at the Golden Globes on his laptop while slurping greasy Chinese food out of a cardboard takeout container. Or he was - at the first flash of her perfect, painfully familiar face in the montage of dead actors, he stops chewing.

And then there's the pop of a gunshot, tinny and too quiet through the shitty computer speakers, and the chopsticks fall utterly forgotten from his fingers when he jerks forward in the cracked leather driver's seat.

"C'mon c'mon-" he's swearing at the camera operator running away from the action instead of trying to help; he's sliming the keyboard with lo mein noodles while hauling the laptop closer so he can see better; he's staring for snatches of strawberry blonde hair or her slinky green dress, __anything___..._

There's pressure behind his eyeballs and his temples are throbbing - he's pretty sure his head is going to explode if he doesn't know what the hell is happening __right the hell now__, if he doesn't have her warm and breathing and intact before him in the next six seconds.

The video feed goes to black and he mutters something unintelligible; the police radio crackles but Stiles doesn't care. Because, __shit___, _the only good thing about Lydia leaving Beacon Hills (and his life) was that he wasn't supposed to have to worry about her dying anymore. She was supposed to be safe in her big LA mansion and movie star career; the part of her life that had been so tainted with death and danger should have been long over.

The video comes back up, now switched to a news anchor who isn't actually saying anything useful yet but Stiles watches anyway, eyes huge and barely breathing, as they replay the footage over and over.

He tries to keep his eyes on Lydia every time, but she always disappears at the same moment - right before the second shot, hidden in the surging mass of terrified people and overturned chairs.

But he thinks he can see the viscous red spray of blood somewhere near the place where she should be.

His hands are shaking; hell, all of him is. He's pretty sure he can feel quivering in his liver.

__She's fine. She's Lydia, so of course she's fine.__

__...you'd know if she wasn't fine.__

But he doesn't really believe it; not anymore, anyway. There's just been so much time, so many miles between them...he's so wound up and focused on the screen that when his phone buzzes at his hip he jumps, showering himself in cold noodles and sticky sauce. He doesn't even bother swearing, because he's too busy scrambling for his phone. He's suddenly certain that - despite the decade of silence between them - it'll be __her__on the other end, that she knows he watches and roots for her every chance he gets so he saw...whatever it is that he just saw, and is therefore suffering the world's most massive coronary until he knows for certain that she's okay.

He swipes to answer, leaving a sticky streak across the screen. "Lydia?!"

He's answered with a soft sigh, followed by Scott's murmured, "So you were watching."

"Yeah, of course I was fucking watching," Stiles says, feeling fully unleashed to vent every bit of how unsteady and panicked he feels, "It's __Lydia __and there was blood and screaming and no wonder she left us because our lives are always involving blood and screaming but not hers, not anymore, and I don't know how to reach her and now they won't say jack shit on the news except that there was a shooting, like, __no shit, you useless douchebag___, _and - hey, Scott? Can you tell anything about her? Have you got some sort of weird wolf smell thing to tell if she's still alive or-"

"Stiles, stop. Breathe. I'm sure everything is fine, but Allison has Lydia's personal number and the contact info for her agent, and we're going to blow them both up until we hear something."

Scott sounds calm; that seems to only work Stiles up more. He grabs at his chest and wishes, strangely, that he had Scott's old pre-wolf inhaler; he's suddenly certain that without it he's going to pass out from oxygen deprivation at any moment.

"...uh, Stiles? You still with me, man?"

Stiles scrubs his free hand through his hair and then drags it down his face; he exhales so hard that it makes him feel smaller, somehow, like he has deflated.

"Yeah," he finally chokes out. "Yeah, I'm here."

"Good, because, look - the Golden Globes are swarming with private security and cops, and I'm sure they're all being kept up-to-date on Lydia's condition. So Allison thought, since you're a cop, too, maybe you could contact them somehow and-"

Stiles will never know what Scott says next. He doesn't even bother to hang up, just flings the phone across the car and snatches at his still-crackling radio.

"Dispatch, it's Officer Stilinski...no, the __other __Stilinski. I need you to get me the name and contact number for the LAPD's lead investigator on the attempted homicide of-" his voice catches a bit and he has to blink a few times, "-Lydia Martin."


	2. Chapter 2

It should take at least seven hours to drive from Beacon Hills to Los Angeles but, in a move that could quite possibly get him shit-canned, Stiles takes his cop car so he can keep the lights and sirens running (and the speedometer needle on the far side of ninety.)

So it's still dark, some time in the smallest hours of the morning, when he reaches the hospital where they took Lydia. "For treatment of minor lacerations,"the lead investigator had told him on the phone, "nothing serious; she should be released by morning."

Stiles repeats the phrase _minor lacerations _to himself so many times on the drive that they don't sound like words anymore - just meaningless syllables that have a mildly soothing effect, like they are his new mantra.

_Minor lacerations. Only minor lacerations.  
_

But they lose all calming effects the second that he parks and is confronted with the frighteningly clinical reality of a hospital. So he's running by the time he reaches the front doors, and he's sweating and spastic and flashing his badge to bypass the hospital security and police officer stationed outside the door to Lydia's room-

And then he's there, he's got the doorknob in his grasp before he has even really processed the fact that he's actually about to see her, to _speak _with her...

His boots squeak on the linoleum as he steps inside and he stares down at them; the door latches shut behind him with a soft click. He can already tell that the room is small and soulless, smelling like antiseptic and sickness like all hospitals, but _there - _the faint scent of Lydia's signature expensive perfume.

He looks up.

And there she is, perched on the corner of the bed in a faded hospital gown, with bandages on her arm and hand but not a single hair out of place.

Relief pours through him and washes away the adrenaline that has brought him this far, leaves him so drained that Stiles has to sag back against the door. His knees are shaking - his _everything _is shaking - but his face is wearing a nearly hysterical grin.

_Only minor lacerations._

* * *

Somehow, she'd known he would come.

She tries to not know these things anymore, these things that can't be found in books or theorems or logic, but it's _Stiles._ So of course she knows.

She attempts to prepare herself while they stitch her cut hand and the bullet graze on her shoulder; she carefully catalogs all the individual factors - the warm brown of his eyes and hard line of his shoulders, his frenetic energy and incongruously elegant hands, the equation that defines the exact curve of his nose - that add up to _him, _to Stiles.

She forces herself to think about the last time she saw him, the night before graduation, to the heat and sweat and the way his lips had felt dragging over the thin skin on her collarbone. It was their first (and last) time together, and she remembers how surprising he was. She shouldn't have been able to be surprised by him - she'd seen him bleeding and terrified and insane; they'd clung to each other and watched friends die and felt their whole understanding of the world shift beneath them again and again. But there, exposed and pressed against each other between Stiles' soft blue sheets, she saw him in a way she never had. There was no hyperactivity, no clever little quips - no talking, even. He was tender and focused, skillful and slow and _reverent. _She remembers the soft shine of his eyes and how huge they had looked as he'd stared up the length of her naked body to meet hers, and the way he covered every inch of her in kisses, and the hitch of his breath in her ear as they both came.

He was so _different _from the other boys she'd been with, and so much more raw and vulnerable than the Stiles the rest of the world got to see. It was just so...real. And that shook her more than anything else she'd had to face in Beacon Hills, leaving her trembling in his arms for an hour afterward while he tried to find out what he'd done wrong. She just shook her head and finally found the strength to force herself to stop, to convince him to sleep.

She slipped out as soon as he started to snore. And she followed through with her plan the next day.

_He'll understand_, she'd told herself.

And one look at him standing there in his deputy's uniform, the hospital's fluorescent lighting casting shadows over those terribly familiar features, the relief and joy and excitement thrown into sharp contrast, assures her that she was right.

* * *

The last time he'd seen her, she'd been standing on the stage at graduation.

She'd been gone when he woke up that morning and he wasn't even a little surprised - she'd told him weeks ago that she was done. She was leaving Beacon Hills - not to run, his Lydia would never run - but because she wanted to have a life free of all the supernatural crap. So she couldn't afford any more ties to that place, couldn't afford to let herself feel anything that could suck her back in.

So he'd been shocked that she'd let him in at all.

The sun was bright, shining on her cream skin as she'd taken the piece of paper that was her ticket to freedom from this place - from him - and it left his chest so tight he wasn't sure he could breathe. And then she'd looked down on him from the stage, a breeze ruffling her hair and the tassel on her cap - already moved to the opposite side of his own - and she'd smiled.

He'd seen that smile for what it was - a goodbye - so he did his best to answer, but all he could summon was a small nod, his lips pressed flat together.

She'd been gone by the time the ceremony had ended...and ten years had passed.

Well, almost ten years - in a move he knows she would have appreciated, he'd calculated the exact amount of time while he'd been driving.

87,000 hours. It has been exactly 87,000 hours since they'd seen each other, since they'd shared the same air and loaded glances, since he'd felt the electricity zinging down his spine at having her near.

His legs feel steadier enough now - he straightens up and walks closer, stopping far enough away that he couldn't touch her if he tried (he doesn't trust himself to get closer than that just yet.) "That was a pretty extreme length to go to just to get me to come visit," he says with a wink, and it's so awkward and surreal and he just fervently wishes that she'd take charge like she always did so he won't have to feel so strange-

"Oh, please. As if what I've already been through wasn't horrifying enough, now I have to face your feeble attempts at witty banter?" She pretends to shudder, but he knows the purse of her lips is a smile fighting its way onto her face.

"Well, we can jump straight to the 'someone is trying to kill you _again'_ part, but it just feels repetitive at this point."

She smooths her hospital gown over her thighs, stares at the tiny chip in her manicure on her right index finger.

"What have you found out?" She asks, not _could you ask around_ or _I haven't heard anything from the cops yet._ Because she knows that he has already learned everything he can. He may be wearing a uniform now, and he may be harder and more filled out and settled into his bones a bit, but he's still Stiles.

He'll never stop looking out for her.

She's right, of course - he sighs and drags the room's chair to her bedside, turning it so they'll face each other. The room is small enough that when he sinks down into it, their knees are brushing.

"They don't know anything yet. Whoever this is, they're smart and they planned every detail. There's no evidence - no fingerprints, no shell casings, no fibers. They somehow avoided all the security cameras and there's not a single witness who remembers anyone who looked out of place." Stiles curls his fingers into his palms; he wants to tangle them up with hers. "To pull something like this off at an event like the Golden Globes...it's concerning."

Lydia narrows her eyes at him a fraction. "Stop talking like such a cop. It's freaking me out."

Stiles laughs and leans back in the chair, stretching his long legs as much as the cramped space will allow. "Okay. Basically, there's an obsessed wacko out there with a raging boner for your corpse and an IQ almost as high as yours. And, as an added bonus, we have no idea who he is, what he looks like, or if it even is a 'he'."

The bit of color that had returned to her cheeks when he walked in drains away. "You think this is some kind of freaky supernatural Beacon Hills-ish thing?"

"I don't know yet. But, please, _please-"_ And - god - even after all this time, after everything he must have seen and suffered, he can still look at her and be so _raw,_ so caring and concerned and cracked wide open, all of those consuming Stiles emotions just spilling out all over. "Please let me help you. Let me help keep you safe while the police try to find this guy. We can get out of LA, you can come back and stay with me for a while-"

Lydia bristles, hardens. He can see it in the way she slides back in the bed, in the jut of her chin, in the sharp flash of her eye. "You think I can't handle myself? You think I should just run?"

"No, of course not, I'm just scared shitless here and-"

"Because even if I did run, it would never be to Beacon Hills. I'm done being the crazy girl running naked through the woods; I'm done being a GPS for death and screaming like a banshee. I got out, I repressed all of that, and I'm practically _normal_ now. So, I can't go back." Despite the strength in her words, her mouth twists a bit when she holds his gaze for a long second, and when she speaks again, it's softer, almost wounded. "I had to give up too much to get here."

Stiles swallows, thickly, and nods. "Okay. Fine. You're in charge; you always are when it comes to me. So we'll go where you want and do what you want, just let me help you, okay? Helping people with this kind of stuff is sort of what I do now."

Her back straightens and, just like that, all traces of vulnerability disappear.

"I can afford to hire help, you know-"

"-but you'll have no idea if you can trust them-"

"-and I'm really not your problem anymore-"

"-you were never my _problem_, Lydia, _Jesus-"_

"-and if this guy is so dangerous then I don't want you to get hurt-"

Stiles has shifted to the very edge of his chair and now he leans forward even further, until their faces are so close that he can see the tiny flecks of gold glittering in her eyes.

"Lydia, stop. I survived all these years in Beacon Hills, and, more impressively, I survived being in love with you. So I'm sorry, but I'm just not worried about one little psychotic murderer wannabe."

The air between them seems thick and elastic, like it'll be impossible to breathe until she gives in and moves close enough to feel the warmth from his skin, close enough to kiss him, close enough that it's impossible for any space between them to remain.

And she knows she can't, knows that she made her choices and he wasn't one of them, but she'd forgotten how it felt to have him _right here_-

The door swings open and Stiles jumps up so fast that it turns his chair over, putting himself between the door and Lydia, his hand going for his gun instinctively - and then he processes the name badge and white coat. Just a doctor.

A now-slightly-terrified doctor.

"Sorry, man," Stiles offers, straightening the fallen chair. "Probably not the best idea to give a gun to the twitchy guy with ADHD, huh?"

The doctor laughs a bit, nervously, but waits for Stiles to get as far across the room as possible before approaching his patient.

"How are you feeling, Ms. Martin?"

Lydia crosses her ankles, cocks her head slightly as she considers. "Itchy, achy, exhausted, and irritated."

"Well, I've written you prescriptions that should address all of that, so we're ready to discharge you as soon as you feel ready."

She hops off the bed and stands confidently, as if paper-thin gowns that tie at the neck and leave her ass exposed are the latest in high fashion. And her posture is just so _Lydia _that Stiles feels something grow warm in his chest, an uncontrollable tug pulling at the corners of his mouth.

"I was ready hours ago," she answers. "You can give the prescriptions to-" and there's a flicker of uncertainty here; just a slight hesitation, no more than a blink (but Stiles notices - of course he does, he notices _everything_ about her), "-my friend, here." She looks at him, the answer to the question lingering between them hiding in the depths of her eyes. "He's going to be helping me out for a while, and he can start by filling them while I'm getting dressed."

She's going to let him help. He's going to get to be around Lydia for hours, probably days...

Stiles can't help it; he grins. More than that - he fucking _beams._ He feels like there's a leprechaun dancing a jig between his lungs and playing his ribs like a xylophone. He seizes the small squares of paper from the doctor like they're Willy Wonka's goddamn golden tickets, and he's pretty sure his feet don't actually touch the ground the whole trip down to the hospital pharmacy.

And then he starts to freak out.

Because what if this is all some ruse, some Lydia-masterminded plot to get him out of her room so she could sneak off on him again? She could already be gone, in the back of some meathead hired security's SUV, playing right into her stalker's hands and slipping through Stiles' fingers (and he really shouldn't be reduced to thinking in these tired cliches in times of great stress; living in Beacon Hills is pretty much nothing but times of great stress) and then he's drumming his fingers against the pharmacy counter and scratching the back of his neck and just acting like an all-around tweeker until the pharmacist feels like she has to call and double check that the painkiller prescription is actually legit.

So by the time Stiles is sent on his way with four little bottles and stern instructions from a tiny, pinched-face pharmacy tech that "these are for Ms. Martin _only,_" he's fully convinced that when he gets back to Lydia's room it will be empty.

And it is.

_Fuck._

He tosses the bottles on the bed and rubs at his forehead, trying to decide if he'd look too much like an insane stalker if he tries to find her again-

-and the bathroom door swings open and Lydia emerges, oblivious to the mild stroke she'd inadvertently caused him.

She's wearing that beautiful green gown from the awards show, and even though it's now crumpled, torn, and blood-stained, she's still the most beautiful thing he's ever seen - especially when she puts her hands on her hips and raises one imperious eyebrow.

"So, Officer Stilinski, how do you propose we get out of here without giving my stalker - or the paparazzi - their money shot?"


End file.
